Early Numbers Indicate Ello Has Gone From Obscure to Up-and-Coming

Ello seems to have exploded in popularity, but that doesn't mean users are leaving Facebook.

Ello seems to have exploded in popularity, with a wave of early adopters and spurned Facebook users signing up to see what all the fuss is about. Because of its corporate conviction to open communication, a lot of data on Ello’s early activity is publicly available. RJMetrics analyzed this data and compared Ello’s growth to the trajectory of other networks to see how successful it really is.

The conversations on Ello seem to be very engaging: Active users have made an average of 8.3 posts; 33 percent of posts contain images. As is to be expected, a lot of people have signed up and done little with the site: 36 percent of users have never posted, and six days after signups, only 20 percent of users are still active.

The RJMetrics data shows a large spike in new user signups on the September 23rd. New user signups began to slow after three days, but the overall user number continued to climb. TechCrunch, which is credited for spurring Ello’s recent popularity, says the surge may not indicate a shift away from Facebook.

However, when comparing the early days of Twitter to the current days of Ello, both show around 20-plus percent of users are active on any given day. Perhaps the most impressive stats in the RJMetrics data are that Ello is adding 3,000 to 4,000 users per hour, 73 percent of which haven’t updated more than three times. In 2011, Instagram was adding 800 users per hour, and 65 percent of users hadn’t added more than three pictures.

In terms of user growth rates, Ello seems to be in good company. Other data from SimilarWeb shows that users spend an average of more than six minutes on Ello, plenty of time to create a profile, upload a picture and follow a few people. It’s not anywhere close to Facebook’s 20-plus minutes, but Ello has received more than four million visits in the last few weeks. Baby steps.